The recent emergence of identity politics as a topical issue is an important development. It is, however, nothing new but merely an elucidation of how politics has generally been conducted for generations.
For the purpose of distinguishing the different versions of these politics, it is helpful to entitle the more recent variety the new identity politics.
Old identity politics were located within socially and economically embedded identity hierarchies, created and nurtured over the past few centuries.
According to this hegemonic cultural paradigm that has been receding over recent decades, human dignity, quite crudely, was conceived of in terms of the human phenotype as the absurd de-facto measure.
Social and legal status, in many parts of the world, and the economic privilege flowing from them, cascaded downwards along a value spectrum that diminished according to the shade of pigmentation.
Though the political power that created that world is generally receding , that world is still with us and will continue to be so for some time yet.
It is understandable, given the quantum of time involved, why the lingering identity constructs and their intrinsic hierarchies came to be invisible to their beneficiaries over time, in plain sight.
After all a fish might be forgiven for failing to see water after a while.
That is why some might see the new identity politics, perhaps disingenuously, as the genesis of identity politics instead of a rebellion against extant identity realities.
The present generation must navigate the fraught terrain of highlighting existing identity-based socioeconomic realities, with the risk that this political stance might be confused with defending the idea of identity politics albeit with reversed roles.
I hope this alluring trope misrepresents those in the main stream of the new identity politics.
Yes, because of the past and the present it created, there is an uncomfortable but necessary emphasis on identity. After all the doctor can only cure those ailments that are identified.
This time around, however, the end-game rather than racial dominance, must be the removal of the cancer of the structural identity imprints in our country and world.
Such a world is possible only if justice and equity are deemed worthwhile pursuits rather than burdensome inconveniences or instruments of cheap political point-scoring.
Otherwise we risk abandoning the noble quest for a world shaped by universal values for the benefit of all, for one characterised by a perpetual contest between various identity constructs. One that ebbs and flows according to who happens to possess sociocultural power at a given moment in history
Identity politics are dangerous precisely as they tend to operate within the confines of an insular zero-sum moral framework that is impervious to persuasion by superior moral logic, particularly when that logic emanates exogenously.
This is because according to identity politics, identity is the sole arbiter of what is right and wrong.
Of course, the preponderance of this Manichean logic in an unavoidably diverse country and world can only know dominance not by transcendent values but that of one identity group by another.
My point here is that those who, like Ms Helen Zille, are given to endless pontifications about the rise of identity politics, must reflect on why the credibility of their supposed moral stand is being questioned.
Perhaps it may become clear that there is a marked difference between a principled stand against the use of identity as proxy for human dignity and the prerogative to question the immorality of identity hierarchies of the past continuing unhindered in their present status as reliable indicators of present socioeconomic privilege.
